so last night i went to see morcheeba! it was rockin', but the scariest part was going to the big DA LU (mainland). the mainland has always been looming above me here in hong kong (see map), and the train i take to school always continues on to the mainland after it drops me off at CUHK. but i never worked up the nerve to actually go until we heard morcheeba would be playing.
so, it was cool. we left last night and due to a few planning errors got mixed up in meeting some of our fellow concert-goers, setting us back an hour. we took the KCR up to Lo Wu and then walked through the big HK customs building. i got my passport stamped, then we were all herded onto a walkway/bridge that connected the HK customs building to the mainland customs building. yeah, everyone says Hong Kong is "part of China" now, but the border is still very tightly controlled and they're still effectively two different countries.
once on the communist side i waited in line with a bunch of arab and african dudes in the "foreigner" line while they all made jokes in arabic or something. then the passport-checking guy mumbled at me in mandarin and stamped my visa again. i was finally in the mainland.
the funny thing about shenzhen: even though it borders hong kong and is in guangdong ("canton"), it's not a cantonese-speaking area, really. shenzhen is an entirely new city, having sprouted up in the last 10 years since the "shenzhen special economic zone" bordering hong kong was created. thus, since most of the people in shenzhen came from all over china to start businesses or what have you, mandarin is actually more prevalent here. so the cab drivers, shop owners, etc, they all use mandarin!
the club was very modern, surprisingly -- shenzhen is a cheaper night out than hong kong, which attracts some of the HK clubbing people looking for a bargain. morcheeba was great; i hadn't realized that they were a real band from hearing their record -- i'd always thought it was just one woman's voice and a bunch of computers. but they were a full band, with a guitarist, bassist, drummer, keyboard player, and a turntablist, and they created the trip-hop morcheeba sound i expected without any fancy computers. which was nice.
the border closes at midnight, so as soon as they finished, we were in a taxi heading back to the station. another hasty border crossing, this time with a lot of running, and we were safely on one of the last KCR trains coming back to hong kong at 11:50pm or so. by 1am we were home again and watching "A-day" begin on CNN.
Posted by cce at March 22, 2003 10:27 AM | TrackBackheh, i live in shenzhen teaching engrish in Luo Hu and the sars mess here really is subdued , thanks to the commie govt censoring hk news broadcasts, the only people with face masks are hk people, but i was goin to go to the morcheeba concert but it turned into a huge shenzhen expat gathering, and im frankly sick of em, i see the same foreigners when i go out, some1 at my school got sars, but hes recovering at home, ive been telling my kids in mandarin and engllish to wash their hands with soap and practice some decent hygine, cause no1 in china does, but when i go into hk and return back to shenzhen, i always think of shenzhen as the "wild west", what sucks is due to this sars mess i dont think im going to hit the hong kong film festival this year, there are so many movies i want to see, oh well, im sure i can find the dvds here in pukeland, i mean shenzhen
Posted by: sonatinas at April 3, 2003 09:35 PM